


For Deathless Gods or Mortal Men

by metonymy



Category: Hadestown (Musical)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange things grow in the shadows, in the dark, in the lightless places where nobody sees. But that doesn't mean they're not growing nonetheless. Persephone reflects on her garden in Hadestown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Deathless Gods or Mortal Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [byzantienne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/gifts).



What do you do, when you're stolen away, little more than a child?

(Stolen. Enticed? Seduced? None of that to start, just a man her mother knew, friendly at the garden gate. And she didn't think he was more than that, then.)

What do you do when you're ruined?

(Because she's certainly been ruined in the oldest sense, despoiled, pure sweet girlhood dragged down into the dirt. She never says whether he asked first, or whether he simply took it all. None of that matters now.)

A certain girl, with a certain understanding of gardens and the dirt they have to grow in, might decide to plant a new garden.

Strange things grow in the shadows, in the dark, in the lightless places where nobody sees. But that doesn't mean they're not growing nonetheless. 

He's a force of nature, her husband. The singer is right about that. Hades owns this town and everything in it, his name stamped into the dust with every boot and scrawled across the sightless sky above in every mournful cry. He doesn't know how to love a thing without owning it; the words are the same to him, mirrored across the fine border of tongue and teeth. He sees a thing and he reaches for it. In his own way he does love the people of his town, father and overseer. She knows this.

Or she tells herself this. 

So he loves her in the same way. He saw her in her mother's garden and wanted her - and wanting isn't the same thing as love, and having isn't the same thing as loving. He wanted and he took and he held her tight, like he holds the keys that keep the gate of this town shut tight.

He made it clear that even if she went back home, she'd never be her mother's girl again. 

But how she came here is not nearly as important as how things are now.

Persephone wasn't made for weeping and wailing. She wasn't made for a lifeless town and a silent throne. The first shoots of spring push through the cold ground and into the air that glowers overhead. The flowers are only pale green buds at first, furled tight against the danger of a sudden frost. 

She knows what it is to see them freeze and die. But they always come back in the end.

So when she found herself here in this cold, still town, she bided her time. She kept her eyes wide and waited for an opening.

After all, her mama was the one who made things grow, and her daddy was the one who ruled the world beyond the wall. Whether or not they left her there, she knew how to get her own way. How to coax a little tenderness from stony earth and train a vine to grow along a pole.

And the thing Hades never realized was this: wanting a thing gives it a power over you, a hold that can't be denied.

She was carried off, out of the garden. She ate the fruit from his table, dark and tempting. And she struck a bargain.

Persephone is very good at getting what she wants. Things were never going to be the way they were; she was never going to be that girl in the garden again, grass soft under her feet and flowers filling the air with perfume. So why not be a queen here, if she couldn't be a princess for her mother anymore? Why not become the woman of her own right?

Flowers will grow in almost any soil if they're given the chance.

Every year, she feels the itch come in her fingers, like the sap starting to stir in the trees. She boards that train out of the town, out the one gate in Hades' wall, and she dries her mother's tears with a handkerchief bordered in gold.

The trees bloom and the flowers blossom and the high grasses grow heavy with the weight of grain. Her mother smiles again, a thin curve like the bow of a stalk of wheat in the wind. 

In the high summer everything is dry and drowsy. Persephone remembers the dust of Hadestown as the rivers shrink under the warm sun, the tang of the metal in the air as a storm builds in the distance. Sometimes she misses him, if only for a moment.

The summer fades into autumn, leaves shedding her favorite green for gold and rust more suited to her husband. She gathers her own harvest then, tucking away bits and pieces of the world for later. Preserving what she can for the long dark months ahead. The silver of the moon catches in her hair, the scraps of sunlight cling under her nails and sink into her skin like warm butter and smiles. She presses leaves and flowers and saves their scents and stoppers it all up with corks and wax and string. 

And when the harvest is gathered in, when the leaves have fallen from the trees to crumble underfoot, her husband comes to take her back. He never looks in her trunk, rattling with bottles and jars and vials. He never looks in the valise stuffed with packets and sachets and bags. He doesn't follow her when she lugs those bags right past the big house and down to the bar. 

Who would dare accuse the queen of being a bootlegger? Nobody who wanted to keep their place in Hadestown, that's for sure. Not the king who's just thankful his wife has kept their bargain and come back once again.

And the people in the town - they've struck their own bargains. They're here because they have to be, because they had no other choices left. Because building a wall was better than starving to death in the long cold winter. Because their lives were over and this was what was awaited them all. She's the one who keeps them sane, who keeps them content. When the day's work is done and they filter into the bar, Persephone is the one who offers them a little taste of what they miss. It does no harm to put a smile on their lips, to make them remember what they lost. It doesn't matter if a tear slips from her eye when she's serving it up.

She gives the people what they want, what they need. She's under no illusions that Hades doesn't know. But he can hardly stop her. More - he doesn't want to stop her. He's not a man to take a broken vow easily, but Persephone doesn't intend to find out how true that is. He'll curse her for defying him, and she'll kneel at his feet and join him in bed, and she'll sneak back out just like she does every night. And he'll curse her again. But he'll never cast her out.

He doesn't even throw her away when she pleads for Orpheus. How can she not? The singer is the first one to bring fresh air since she came here at winter's dawn. He sings of the things she remembers, of the things she brings back every fall. He makes the guard dogs lie down at his feet and the workers stop in their tracks. He makes the stones shiver with the sound of his voice. Persephone can't resist that. She's seen Eurydice wafting through the town, mourning her love, cut down like the first flower of spring after a sudden frost. That girl deserves another chance, and that boy - well. If he was brave enough to come down here, to throw himself in the jaws of Hades' rage, he deserves whatever he might be able to get. 

When he gets a handful of dust and a river of tears, though, she can't be too surprised. Hades doesn't easily give up what he has. Of course there was a trick, a catch. Persephone knows you can never leave Hadestown that quickly.

There are still those cracks in the wall, though. The mortar's still a little crumbled where the singer's words passed through. And if the queen wants the songbird to come sing at her table, well. The king can hardly deny her that. 

If the songbird and the queen share their memories of the spring and the summer, no one will think it strange.

And if they pass a little too close to those cracks in the wall - well. Nobody's going to mention a thing like that. Nobody thinks a little wind and a memory could bring down a wall. No one would suspect it. That would just be too strange to believe.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, byzantienne! I love this album and it was a treat to get the chance to write a little about this take on the characters.
> 
> Title is from a snippet of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.


End file.
